


Next Year

by othersideofthis (hikaru)



Category: Florida Panthers RPF, Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 09:30:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5534768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hikaru/pseuds/othersideofthis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kladno is a long way away and summer is long without hockey.</p><p>But everyone’s right. There’s always next year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Next Year

**Author's Note:**

  * For [danaste](https://archiveofourown.org/users/danaste/gifts).



> Takes place in a vaguely defined universe where younger players are expected to thank and welcome veterans in unconventional ways. Everything is consensual. (There is a line that implies that perhaps that was not always the case.)

Florida is humid and sticky, making the hair at the back of Jaromir’s neck curl and drip under the hot sun. He pulls a bottle of water from the cooler on Mitchy’s boat and presses it to the back of his neck, closing his eyes and sighing against the chill, before cracking it open and taking a swig.

Sitting on a gently rocking boat, swapping stories from back in the day, isn’t exactly how Jaromir imagined the twilight of his career going -- he thought it was going to involve a lot of bus rides in Kladno, so he’s not about to complain.

Still. 

There are a lot of things about Florida that he didn’t exactly expect.

 

*

 

Everyone’s quiet, awestruck when Jaromir steps into the locker room.

He knew they were all going to be young, but seeing it, facing it, is different. 

Someone told him, of course, how many of them hadn’t even been born when he first took the ice in the NHL. It wasn’t a statistic he wanted to hear, but he couldn’t avoid it, either.

It’s not like it matters. 

He plays because he still loves it, because the idea of hanging up his skates makes his hands shake, his throat go dry. He plays because he still has more to give, because he’s not dead yet, and _that’s_ what matters.

 

*

 

His linemates, combined, haven’t even been in this world as long as he has.

It’s fine.

 

*

 

“That goal was all yours,” Sasha says. “Your pass, just.” He waves his hand, looking for the right words, then gives up.

“Please,” Jaromir says. “It was all in the timing. Anyone could have thrown you that pass.”

Sasha leans close to him; Jaromir can feel the heat radiating off of him.

“But it was you,” Sasha says. He reaches out, grips Jaromir’s leg, squeezes.

Jaromir shakes his head. “The season is still very long, Sasha,” he says. “Thank me later.”

 

*

 

Eks is fascinating. The way he carries himself -- there’s confidence, swagger, a hint of cockiness, like you’d expect from any number one draft pick, from someone a sure lock for a Calder nod, but he’s so _earnest_. Humble. It’s not exactly what Jaromir expected.

“Do you need anything while I’m up? Another water?” he asks at breakfast, and, yes, he’s a rookie and that’s what rookies do sometimes, but Jaromir thinks that Eks will still be quietly asking his teammates if they need anything when he’s 35 and should be down icing his knees.

Jaromir waves his hand, makes a dismissive noise around a mouthful of eggs. 

Eks runs his fingers along the edge of the table, pauses when he gets too close to Jaromir. “But if you do,” he says, and he taps his fingers next to Jaromir’s wrist on the table. “If you do.” His fingers just brush the back of Jaromir’s hand. “I’m here.”

“Eat your breakfast,” Jaromir says. “You’re still growing.”

Eks smiles, turns an interesting shade of pink under his beard.

 

*

 

“You didn’t tell me,” Jaromir says, “that they were going to be like this.”

Mitchy stretches on the floor, bodyweight pressing down against a foam roller. He winces when he hits a sore spot, then shakes the look off his face.

“It wasn’t like that in Jersey?” he asks. Jaromir shakes his head. “Weird.” Mitchy slides off the roller, sprawls on the floor, shakes out his legs. “I thought it was everywhere.”

“Lou,” Jaromir says, and Mitchy nods, like it explains it all. Lamoriello’s strange rules for his team didn’t stop with Twitter and beards; he also had a say in exactly how the young guys conducted themselves. “Other teams, yes. Maybe I forgot how they are.”

“They’re a little more forward, here, I guess. More than other teams,” Mitchy says. He kneads his fingers into his thighs, working at the muscles. “It caught me off guard, too.”

Jaromir smiles. “So you could have told me.”

“And ruin the surprise?” Mitchy raises his eyebrows. “The kids are half the fun of playing here.”

He might be right, who knows. Jaromir’s having too much fun playing to worry about the rest.

 

*

 

Huby actually drops to his knees in front of Jaromir. They do things differently in the Q, he knows, but still. 

“We didn’t even win the game,” Jaromir says as Huby folds his long legs under his body.

“You got us on the board.” He unlaces Jaromir’s skates, taps his shin to get him to lift up his feet, one by one, to slip the skates off. “That counts for something.”

Jaromir sets a hand on Huby’s shoulder. “You don’t have to, you know.” 

Huby starts picking at the tape on Jaromir’s socks, unwinding it. “I know,” he says. He looks up and his face is flushed red, not just with exertion from the game. His fingers land at Jaromir’s ankle and he squeezes. “But I will.”

 

*

 

The loss is bad enough -- a shut-out, at home, against the Lightning -- but it also officially eliminates them from the playoffs, and that’s what stings even more. They played themselves right out of contention, just when the kids were starting to believe in themselves enough to think they could get there.

It’s a little like grieving, Jaromir thinks, the way they all scatter afterwards to deal with the loss. It’s not the end of the world but for some of them, it feels like it.

He has advice, he has words, if any of them will listen, but right now, the kids are all rubbed raw with the loss.

They’ll come to him in good time.

 

*

 

Bjugs is the first to visit, once the season officially ends. He texts first, because he said his mama raised him right, that he knows better than to just show up uninvited. 

He brings a dish of, well, something. “Hotdish,” he says. “It’s my mom’s recipe.” He holds out a casserole dish to Jaromir. “It’s, uh.” He shakes the dish a little. It looks very, very heavy. “Probably not in your meal plan, or my meal plan, or anyone’s, but...” He trails off, looks pained. His smile definitely doesn’t go the whole way to his eyes.

“Your mother raise you good,” Jaromir says gently, taking the dish from him and leading Bjugs inside. “Don’t you worry.”

Bjugs follows like a big, yellow puppy, all shaggy hair and huge eyes, while Jaromir leads them to the kitchen, stores the dish in the oven.

“You can keep the dish,” Bjugs says. “It’s no big deal.”

“Why are you here?” Jaromir asks. He leans up against the kitchen counter, eyes Bjugs up. He _knows_ why Bjugs is there, but he wants him to say it.

Bjugs draws himself up to his full height. He looks like he takes up all the room in the kitchen, like he could take up all the space in the world if he wanted.

“I appreciate you,” he says. “That you’re here. That, like.” He runs one hand through his hair, shakes his head. “Even though we’re not on the ice together, I learn from you, and you deserve something for that, don’t you think?”

Jaromir shrugs. “None of you owe me anything, you know.”

Bjugs stretches one long arm, brushes his fingers against the hem of Jaromir’s t-shirt. “I know. We know. But still.”

Bjugs leans down, presses his lips softly to Jaromir’s.

Things are different now, than when Jaromir was coming up in the league. The kids come freely, eagerly.

Everything is so different.

 

*

 

Sasha and Huby come over the weekend.

“None of you owe me anything,” he tells them, too, just to be fair.

Sasha laughs. “You joke? All those goals, since you came here? Me and Huby, you think we score them without you?”

“Yes,” Jaromir says. “Of course you would.”

“Please,” Huby says, with a bark of laughter. “With, who, Pirri centering? He doesn’t know how to dish, even if his contract depended on it.”

“Next year,” Sasha says as he takes Jaromir’s hand, tugs him towards the couch. “Next year, we have you all season, you drag us to playoffs?”

“We’ll see,” Jaromir says.

Huby’s hands push up under his t-shirt. The air conditioning’s up too high and the chill bites at his skin as Huby peels him out of his shirt.

“We’ll help,” Huby says. His teeth slide along Jaromir’s neck.

“Like you’re helping now?”

Sasha grins. Big, toothy. Feral. “Exactly, friend,” he says, then drops to his knees. “Exactly like this.”

 

*

 

Before he heads back to Kladno for the summer to rest and train, Mitchy invites him out to the boat, one last time.

“It was a good year,” Mitchy says. He hands over a bottle of water; he knows better by now than to offer a beer.

“We could still be playing,” Jaromir says. “Ottawa is still playing.”

Eks settles in next to Mitchy, long legs curled underneath him. He leans against Mitchy; Eks never came to Jaromir at the end of the season and now, he thinks he knows why, with the way Mitchy’s fingers curl in the back of Eks’ shirt.

“Next year,” Eks says. He and Mitchy clink their beer bottles together.

“We’ll see,” Jaromir says, raising his bottle up in a toast to them.

 

*

 

Kladno is a long way away and summer is long without hockey.

But everyone’s right. There’s always next year.


End file.
